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In "Zero Hour" by Ray Bradbury the action in this story takes place in a typical suburban neighborhood in the near future. Children across the country are deeply involved in an exciting game they call "Invasion": it involves putting together odd devices from kitchen utensils and working out mathematical formulas. Their parents think of it as harmless fun until it turns out that the invasion is real and aliens are using the children to help them get control of Earth.
Eight-year-old girl named Mink plays a new game with the other children. This game which involves an imaginary friend Drill, who is asking them to gather objects to aid in their pretend game of Invasion. When Mink's mother Mary Morris takes an interest, she soon realizes that there may be something more sinister (зловещее) going on then a simple children's game. Mary barely notices and Mink explains that they're playing a new game, Invasion. As she runs outside, a couple of older boys, Eddie and Joseph, notice but dismiss it as a stupid game.
Meanwhile, Mink and her 8-year-old friends gather the items they've taken and start putting something together in the bushes. Joseph rides over and asks if he can help but Mink says he'd just make fun of him. The boy is disappointed but Eddie taunts him for playing with the babies until Joseph rides away with him. Outside, Mink starts reciting scientific components as her friends take notes. Mary calls her in for lunch and Mink says she'll be there in a few minutes, then recites mathematical formula to the other children, as if someone is dictating it to her. She's told to get a hexagon ['heksəgən] and runs into the house to get a cheese grater shaped like a hexagon. She explains to Mary that her friend Drill, someone new in the neighborhood, wants it. Mink runs outside and Mary looks outside to see her daughter going back to the other children.
At lunch, Mink tries to run off, Mary stops her and insists she finish her lunch. Mink insists it's the end of the world and says she needs to go play with Drill. When Mary demands more of an explanation, Mink reluctantly explains that Drill is from another planet and couldn't figure out a way to invade Earth. Drill told her that they needed a way to surprise Earth and form a fifth column from children. Mary doesn't take her daughter seriously as she talks about four dimensions and children's imagination, and how Drill said they wouldn't have to take baths or go to bed. Her mother threatens to call Drill's parents, and Mink says that Drill thinks that Mary and the other parents are dangerous. As Mink leaves her, she asks what "logic" and "impressionable" means, and promises that Mary won't be hurt much.
Mary`s sister calls on the videophone. She talks about what Mink is doing and notices that her nephew Jimmy is also looking for a hexagon-shaped object for his friend Drill. Mary begins to wonder what's going on and Mink explains that her friend is scared and must have grown up all of a sudden. She insists that zero hour is 5 o'clock and they're almost ready. Mary comes over and demands answers, and Mink explains that Drill is stuck halfway through. If they can get him through, the others will come through with him.
Mary watches the clock nervously. At 4:55, Henry pulls into the driveway. He notices Mink, who tells him to go away. When Henry goes inside Mary hears an electrical static noise from outside and Mary tells him to tell the children to put off the invasion and stop zero hour. There's an electrical noise and a man screams, and Mary runs up to the attic with Henry.
Mary manages to get into the attic and pulls Henry in with her. She has him lock the door, insists that they'll sneak out at midnight. She tells Henry to be quiet, they hear someone banging around downstairs. He calls out to them and Mink hears them. Henry realizes something is going on wrong but it's too late. A blue light glows under the door and Mink calls out to them. When they don't respond, the door dissolves and Mink peers in and says "peek a boo"... with shadowy blue figures standing behind her.
“The Star Ducks” by Bill Brown takes place in the 1940-s , on a small farm in the United States . In those days , country people lived quite differently from those in the city . The nearest neighbor was often miles away, and travel was difficult . While electricity and telephones were becoming available in the cities , they were not widely available in rural areas . In addition , the daily duties of taking care of farm animals and crops kept farmers close to home . For these reasons, farmers were usually quite isolated and had little contact with the outside world . The main characters in “The Star Ducks” are a farming couple the Alsop’s and a newspaper reporter . The story brings out in a humorous way , the differences in their values and the ways in which they view the world
A reporter Ward Rafferty is called from the city to the country to investigate a mysterious plane crash. The crash was, of course, an alien landing, but the country folk (the Alsops) are so stupid rubes (деревенщина) that they don’t even understand the importance of such an event. The aliens, despite being telepathic beings who are “part bug,” know to keep “their antennae neatly curled to show they weren’t eavesdropping on other people’s minds,” and “their name is something about bending iron with a hammer.” The reporter eventually puzzles out that this is “Smith.” Get it? The aliens are Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
Ward Rafferty gets to know that the Smiths had visited 3 years before and traded the Alsops some space eggs for some chicken eggs… only the eggs had rotted before they reached their home planet, so now they’re back for a breeding pair. After they blast off, the reporter, desperate for proof of this significant occasion, asks the Alsops where the space eggs are, and is told that they hatched into star ducks – something like a hippo combined with a swallow, with 6 legs each. The Alsops ate them for Thanksgiving. At the end of the story Mr Alsops finds camera but its too lateA reporter does not get the story. It just isn’t his day.
"Human Is" is a science fiction short story by Philip K. Dick. The plot centers on the crisis facing a woman Jill Herrick whose cold and emotionally abusive husband returns from a survey mission to the dying planet Rexor IV, changed for the better—his psyche was replaced by a Rexorian, glad to have escaped the confines of its dying planet. Philip K. Dick was driven to find answers to the questions: "What is reality?"/"What is human?" Although he may never have reached final conclusions on reality,
he had many ways of telling us what human is.
Lester Herrick goes to another planet, called Rexor IV, in connection with his work. When he returns, he has changed into a nothing more than playing with children, something he used not to like. Later on the woman, Jill, discovers that the reason Lester is so changed is because an alien has supplanted Lester's body, and Lester - his "psychic contents", that is - is still on Rexor IV. We then find out that the aliens on the above-mentioned planet do this regularly with humans, because the alien race can no longer live on their decaying planet, and their only chance of survival is to escape in this manner to earth. This is, of course, illegal, and when it is discovered, the aliens are killed and the original human "essence" is retrieved. Jill, realising that in turning the alien over to the authorities she will be getting her original husband back, decides to pretend that the alien is her real husband, and in this way saves the alien's life. The woman prefers an alien, who poses as her husband, to her real husband because the impostor treats her with respect and kindness, whereas the real husband is, to put it mildly, an unfeeling, selfish, dominating workaholic, who has no respect for his wife's needs or longings; in fact, has no emotional understanding at all.
The reader feels that Jill has made the right choice, and the ending is a happy one: she still called him Lester and he did not mind. He put his arm around her, drawing her close to him. He gazed down tenderly as they walked through the thickening darkness, between the yellow candles of light that marked the way. He promised to do anything she wished. Whatever would make her happy.
What Dick is implying is that a human being may not necessarily be human, and, when he behaves more like a machine than a human being, he forfeits his right to belong to the human race.
Anthony's powers were present at birth, as he was able to kill the obstetrician and then, instinctively, separate his birthplace, the town of Peaksville, Ohio, from the rest of Earth moments after he was born. Nobody knows whether Anthony transported Peaksville somewhere or whether the rest of the world (or for that matter, the universe) was destroyed and only the town remains.
There is no electricity, and the residents have to make their own things and grow their own food; the latter is somewhat difficult as Anthony changes the weather at will. The adults must satisfy Anthony's every whim, or risk displeasing him. Nobody is safe from Anthony, not even his own family, although they can sometimes influence him slightly; after a "smiling" suggestion from his father, Anthony sends the remains of his victims into the family cornfield, after he has finished with them.
As Anthony can read minds, the town's population must not only act content with the situation when near him, but also think they are happy at all times.
However, the story does not present Anthony as evil; he is simply a three-year-old boy with any young child's limited grasp of the world, yet with god-like powers. Even his sincere attempts to help those in need often go horribly wrong, which is why everyone acts as if everything is "good" no matter what — any change Anthony makes could be much worse. Bixby's Anthony Fremont is horrifying not because he's evil, let alone a totalitarian dictator, but because he's three years old: he understands that others feel pleasure and pain, and even tries to please them on occasion (usually, with unfortunate results), but his worldview still revolves around himself and his own particular "likes." To make matters worse, despite his telepathic and telekinetic powers, Anthony doesn't possess a superhuman intellect. He acts irrationally and on impulse, doesn't altogether understand the adults around him, and shows no signs of real purposefulness in his various demonstrations of power.
The story mostly takes place during a surprise birthday party for the Fremonts' neighbor, Dan Hollis. The residents take turns passing around certain objects, like books, music or furniture, since they cannot acquire anything new from the outside world. Dan receives a newly-discovered Perry Como record for his birthday and wants to play it right away, but as Anthony does not like singing, the others advise him to wait until he gets home. Dan gets drunk and begins demanding that they sing, first "Happy Birthday" and then "You Are My Sunshine". Angrily he turns on Anthony's parents, crying, "You had to go and have him," then he defiantly continues to sing as Anthony appears in the room. Anthony decides Dan is a "bad man" and turns him into some sort of horrific entity (described only as "something like nothing anyone would have believed possible") before "thinking" him into a deep grave in the cornfield.
Because Anthony's Aunt Amy carelessly complained about the heat earlier, the next day Anthony makes it snow, which "killed off half the crops — but it was a good day."
Humans rely too much on robotic machines. Robots should not be able to communicate or act like humans on their own. Brian Aldiss, the author who wrote the short story “Who Can Replace a Man” demonstrates how without humans the robots would take over our world. The planet is staffed by robots. Robots in science fiction needed Asimov to offer more sophisticated way that humans would program their mechanical helpers. Here, Aldiss’ programing simply means obeying man. One would think we’d be so much more carefully in delineating what a robot can or cannot do. A rather simplistic take on a very complicated issue.
Humans need to have more power over robotic machines. The robots are classified by how their brains are wired. Class one being the smartest, being a human, and class 10 being the dumbest, a bot. People are not classified by brain types but by the knowledge they have. Without the knowledge and the brain robots wouldn’t be able to have emotions, therefore they couldn’t fight and argue with one another. In the short story the bots get themselves into an argument and fight in the city destroying humans and themselves. If the robots didn’t have any classified brains they wouldn’t have been able to get themselves into that situation. Robots need to not take on life themselves. They need to rely on us humans. Therefore when we do become extinct, the robots will know how to run without us in a proper way.
[The field-minder finished turning the top-soil of a two-thousand-acre field. When it had turned the last furrow, it climbed on to the highway and looked back at its work... the land was bad. Like the ground all over Earth, it was vitiated by over-cropping or the long-lasting effects of nuclear bombardment. It went slowly down the road, taking its time. t was intelligent enough to appreciate the neatness all about it. Nothing worried it, beyond a loose inspection plate above its atomic pile which ought to be attended to.]
«The Machine that Won the War» is a science fiction short story by Isaac Asimov.
Three influential leaders of the human race meet in the aftermath of a successful war against the Denebians. Discussing how the vast and powerful Multivac computer was a decisive factor in the war, each of the men admits that in fact he falsified his part of the decision process because he felt that the situation was too complex to follow normal procedures.
John Henderson, Multivac's Chief Programmer, admits that he altered the data being fed to Multivac, since the populace could not be trusted to report accurate information in the current situation.
Max Jablonsky then admits that he altered the data that Multivac produced, since he knew that Multivac was not in good working order due to manpower and spare parts shortage.
Finally, Lamar Swift, Executive Director of the Solar Federation, reveals that he had not trusted the reports produced by Multivac, and had made the final decisions purely on the toss of a coin.
"The Machine That Won the War," by Isaac Asimov, is a story that teaches a valuable lesson about humanity.
The setting is the future of Earth, and a great war had just been won against an enemy race. Two men, Swift and Henderson, are debating over who really won the war for Earth: the giant strategy computer known as Multivac, or the men in charge of making the maneuvers and programming the computer.
John Henderson is a nervous man, while Lamar Swift, the military captain, is calm but rational. While the people hailed the computer, the two really knew who the heroes were. Henderson explained the fact that Multivac was nothing more than a large machine, only capable of doing what it was programmed to do. He stated that ever since the beginning of the war, he had been hiding a secret. It was the fact that some of its (Multivac`s) data might have been unreliable. This conflict, as you will note later, helped win the war.
The great computer was capable of creating a direct battle plan which Earth forces could use to attack their enemies. However, with Henderson inputting faulty data, this caused some of the battle plans to be unreliable. His internal conflict between himself losing his job and wanting to keep it made him jingle with the programming until it seemed right. This foreshadowing helps the reader to see that someone is going to have to act upon Henderson s faults if the war is to be won. Swift, the military commander, received these battle plans that Henderson had printed up out on the front (the front being the battle front).
He, realizing that some of these plans were not appropriate, had to act upon a different form of machine. Swift`s motivation for not always acting upon what was laid before him helped change the course of the war. He told Henderson that when faced with the difficult decisions, he didn`t use Multivac`s data all of the time. This conflict, making these tough decisions, helps influence the climax. The climax of the story comes when Swift tells Henderson he used a coin to make all of the though decisions instead of Multivac s data. This use of situation irony shows us that in the worst imaginable scenario, the outcome is actually made so simply. The lesson I found in this story is to not always trust what you see before you, and that human beings will forever take chances even in the riskiest of situations. In conclusion, The Machine That Won the War, taught us all a valuable lesson about how humans think, and contained a humorous, ironic ending which stunned (or should have stunned) everyone.